Japanese investment management firm J Trust is looking to acquire a sizable stake in Vietnam Construction Joint Stock Commercial Bank (CBBank), which is one of the three ailing banks the central bank bought for zero dong in 2015, the governmental portal reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue and Nobiru Adachi, senior managing director at J Trust Bank. Source: VGP.
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According to Adachi, J Trust has successfully revived and restructured weak banks in South Korea and Indonesia. The firm is interested in similar operations in Vietnam’s banking sector.
Adachi expected J Trust’s participation in CBBank's restructuring process would become a gateway facilitating further cooperation between Vietnamese and Japanese enterprises.
At the meeting, Hue welcomed J Trust’s initiative in acquiring and developing weak banks in Vietnam, including CBBank.
Hue asked J Trust to work with CBBank and the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) on the acquisition method, while expecting the buying proposal would be submitted to the government for approval in the near future.
CBBank was formerly known as Dai Tin Bank (Trust Bank). All shares of the bank were acquired by the SBV in March 2015 to avoid a collapse of the banking system.
The lender, which stopped publishing annual reports since 2012, has been in trouble since then. In 2013, Thien Thanh Group renamed the bank from TrustBank to Vietnam Construction Bank.
Established in 1977, J Trust, through its subsidiaries, provides various financial services in Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.
In a meeting with major Japanese financial corporations last October, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said he hoped Japanese enterprises to participate in the reform and modernizing process of Vietnam’s banking and financial sector, especially through the acquisition of weak banks and turning them into wholly foreign-owned banks.
As Vietnam and Japan have forged an extensive strategic partnership, cooperation in the finance – banking sector is also strong, Phuc stated in a meeting with Kanetsugu Mike, president and CEO of Japan’s MUFG Bank in February.
